The Final Gift
by Speaker for the Dead aka 17
Summary: How I'd really like the Voyager to get home. Pure candy fluff with no plot whatsoever. Just Pure Fluff.


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The Final Gift

A _Voyager_ short story by Lt. 17 of 26 aka fROzen TaTTooGaL (MERSTS)

Sometimes I still wonder if it was right to try to help them all those years ago. I knew I had the power, of course, an in a moment of exhilarated bliss I thought I'd be able to give them something back, something for all that they'd done for me over the years. After all, I was a mere child when I left my home. A home which would never have held any real opportunities for me. So I tried to help them, and paid dearly for it.

I lost my mind. In that moment of unadulterated power rushing forth, I'd somehow lost my grip on my sanity, letting it slip and tumble away from me like a lost treasure. When the light had cleared I found myself alone and frightened on a whole new plane of reality; more disorientated than I'd ever been. And in my loneliness and fear I began hallucinating. Before, I had never been lonely. But at that moment it seemed that I was doomed to be alone for the rest of eternity. It was a frightening prospect.

I began to regret my decision to leave what had been my home for the past three years. The more I thought about it, the more I began to regret, with regrets reaching further and further back, all the way to when my journey out had begun. I couldn't return home, and I couldn't seek my friends out either. I was utterly alone, stranded. And the mad fear I felt overrode any semblance of calm and logic that I had. Meticulously, I began to plan a way for the loneliness to end.

That was all so long ago, of course, if you count the years we count them. More than three years have passed in the meantime, a whole third of a life. Most of it was passed in angry bitterness at my benefactors. I even went far enough to consider killing all of them just to see myself safely home. Now that I think of it, it sounds unthinkable and preposterous. But it just goes to show how far gone I was at that time.

At the end of it all it was still the captain who helped me. Details of it still confuse me, because the transition from insanity to lucidity was not an easy one. Apparently I went back in time to the start of my journey, with the full intention of stopping it just then. But I must have been unsuccessful, because what I remember is that I did try to go back, but I was stopped in time by a recording I made many years ago.

Which I only made because I went back in time and tried to free my younger self unsuccessfully and it was made to stop me from going back in time and triggering it all in the first place.

The universe never ceases to amaze one, even if you've been to hell and back. It's still a beautiful place.

And it was that beautiful place that I was reminded of when I saw that recording of myself. Still young, still happy, just like a curious child. Just seeing myself reminded me of what I left my home planet for. My memory was jolted: I remembered making that recording. I remembered the devastation of a Viidian attack, and how worried I'd been when I'd awakened and found the ship practically in pieces. Unthinkable to me, at that time, that in the future I'd actually be driven to cause such destruction for my own sake. And I saw that thought mirrored in the desperation conveyed in the manner of my younger self. She was trying so hard, so desperately, to reach that common key within me, to touch on that empathy. It seemed like she was speaking from a different life altogether.

But that life had also been mine. And that thought made me remember.

I remembered the doctor first. In those three years of my life on the ship I had learned a lot from him, and he'd learnt a lot from me as well. He became than just a mere program to me; he was a friend, someone who I'd seen grow as a person for such a large part of my life. 

And then there was the captain, who taught me so much about courage and honor and loyalty. She'd taken me on board her ship, and I thought I could still see the sadness in her eyes when I told her I was leaving.

And so many others: Tuvok, who taught me in many ways unimaginable; Tom Paris, who could both be churlish and wonderful at the same time; and Neelix, sweet, sweet Neelix, who'd rescued me and loved me and had been the light of my life. Hadn't I sworn that I'd never want to hurt him?

It was so long ago, but I still remember the shocking moment of clarity in which I'd seen the folly I'd committed. I then realized that the past three years of hate and anger had all been wrong, so wrong. I didn't want to kill these people: I didn't hate them, I _loved_ them. And I was only alone because I'd made myself so. I could have gone anywhere I wanted, done anything I'd wanted, but instead I'd spent my time on a foolish quest for revenge. It was childish, almost.

Even as I lie close to the end of my journey, I can still feel the strange rush in my chest I felt back then as I'd realized this. 

Maybe somehow I obscurely remembered the recording I'd made, and vaguely reasoned that I should return to the ship. Maybe I spent all those years plotting to return to the ship because I missed them, and somewhere in the twisted depths I desperately wanted to see them again.

At least, that's what I'd like to believe.

So I parted ways from the ship again with the captain's good graces. It still amazes me that she could bring herself to forgive me after all that I'd tried to do, but maybe I shouldn't be surprised. I still believe in love and hope. It hurt me, of course, to leave the ship for a second time, but I knew that I had to make up for lost time. It's a funny thing, life, that you sometimes get a second chance to do whatever you didn't do and to make the wrongs all right. 

It was the biggest gift anyone had ever given to me, and I was determined to pay it back. And I will.

In the end I didn't go back to Ocampa, although I would have liked to. Instead I explored the cosmos in what little time I had left. Although I'm not nearly nine yet, the stress and pain of those years aged me much faster than I would have. Now I am at the door of the next leg of the journey. There is another side, of that I am certain. But when I leave this life I cannot go back. So I want to say my final farewell to the ship, to everyone who helped me along the way, and to those who helped me find myself again. I owe them that much, at least.

I close my eyes and search for the _Voyager_, at the end of the seventh year of her journey. I grasp the threads of the fabric of space-time as I have taught myself to, folding it gently into a funnel. Before the ship will open a perfect wormhole, one large enough for them to pass through, one long enough to stretch to Earth. Maybe they'll get home, or just send a message through to their loved ones on the other side. But whatever it is, I have my own message to send. Across the distance between the ship and myself I cast my last words before I leave this plane of exsistence forever:

"My gift… to you."

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________The End_______

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